


the mirror cracks on both sides

by sunbrights



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, M/M, Tumblr: letswritesherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Occasionally, Sherlock miscalculates. Very occasionally, he makes a mistake. For the first time in years, he runs away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the mirror cracks on both sides

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Let's Write Sherlock Challenge 1 in what was supposed to be a one-night warm up, and ended up getting away from me a bit. Unbeta'd and unbritpicked, so all mistakes are mine, and any confusion as to what this is even about is on me, too. That said, I hope you enjoy it.

The ride back to Baker Street is long. Sherlock spent a significant amount of time cataloging approximate to and from times by cab between Baker Street and most places in the city (adjusted for time of day, time of year, and holidays, obviously), but tonight he can't find the right one. It occurs to him that perhaps he hadn't timed it yet when it's far too late to start.

Instead, he spends most of the trip studying the splatter pattern of blood across his front. (Not his.) He had to pay the cabbie fifty extra quid to take him, but it's worth it to have time to look. Lestrade probably would have taken his clothes from him immediately.

His phone buzzes for the sixth time in his pocket. He ignores it for the sixth time.

Mrs Hudson is asleep when he arrives. It's late. Early. Sometime in the precious few hours between when London rests and when London wakes. He stands at the door to 221 and looks out at the street while the cab pulls away from the kerb, at how movement trickles away and leaves the city, for once, still.

He decides he doesn't like it, and goes upstairs.

It's another hour before John is in the flat. He didn't come in the cab, Sherlock left him at the crime scene. (Didn't mean to.) Sherlock hears his steps on the stairs and sets his materials down on the table.

John is upset. No. Angry. He stops in the door and goes no further, blocks Sherlock's only avenue of escape with his body, or so he thinks. (As if Sherlock needs a door to get in or out of anywhere.) He takes the deep, measured breaths he uses to slow his heart rate, not that it does him any good. Sherlock can hear anger on his exhale.

“So,” John says eventually. “Are you going to start it, or shall I?”

Sherlock says nothing. He sits on the floor facing the window and watches the empty, silent street.

“That's alright. I can start. I can start with hey, Sherlock, I thought we were past the point where you abandon me in an alley at three in the fucking morning.”

“I didn't abandon you,” Sherlock says.

“No? What're we calling this, then?”

Sherlock looks at his feet. He took his shoes off at some point, but he doesn't remember doing it. He's cold, close as he is to the glass.

“Right.” John is lifting his chin, an aggressive push for dominance. Sherlock doesn't need to look over his shoulder to see it. “We'll use my word, then. The abandoning thing, can't believe I have to say this, but it's got to stop. You can't get away from tonight by running, Sherlock.”

He steps into the flat and leaves the door open. Sherlock looks at it, the door flung carelessly against the wall, left defenseless while John retreats to the kitchen. A dare to try again. To barrel down the stairs and run until London starts itself up again.

“I wasn't trying to,” Sherlock tells him.

“No, had another psychopath to run after, did you? Because now we know you can't have me around when you do that, no sir.”

“You found me in time.”

“Yeah, and what if I hadn't? Hm?” Sherlock waits. John is waiting, too (his question sounded rhetorical but wasn't), but Sherlock can wait longer. “He had a fully loaded handgun, Sherlock, and you-- you were completely unarmed. Five seconds late, and what do you think would have happened?”

“But you weren't late.”

“I'm not going to stand around and watch you die.” Abrupt. Final. Brooking no more argument. John braces himself against the bench. “I won't do it.”

“I'm sorry,” Sherlock says.

No. He can't say that. He should, in this scenario, but he can't.

“I made a miscalculation,” he says instead.

“Yeah, well, about time, isn't it?” John spits, “You needed a fucking wake up call. Because guess what, Sherlock, you aren't alone anymore.”

“I know,” Sherlock says.

John stands in the kitchen and trembles. His fists shake. His mouth presses even thinner. Disarmed. (He wants to keep shouting but he feels like he's losing his justification for it.)

“Good.” He breathes in. (Suppressing his volume.) “Because, Sherlock, I swear. If anything like that ever happens again.” He doesn't point at the door, he thrusts his entire arm towards it. Supposed to better capture Sherlock's attention with more movement. (He doesn't know he does it.) “I'm gone. For good. Do you understand?”

Sherlock closes his eyes.

“Yes.”

*

In the morning, Sherlock starts the cycle anew. He spreads the papers out on the table in the sitting room and flips through them one by one. John sits across from him; a peace offering, but he hasn't been forgiven. Too soon.

“I don't know why you do that,” John says. He sips his coffee and reads the headlines upside-down. A headline reads GIRL, 11, MISSING FROM FAMILY HOME. Sherlock drags a red marker through it. (The coach from the school. Obviously.) “Compared to the work we get from people coming straight to us, the ones you get from the papers are a really small fraction. Compared to the ones we get from Lestrade, even.”

“Sometimes reporters get lucky.” TWO DEAD IN ROBBERY. (Teenagers. A poorly-planned heist for fun gone too far. Boring.) “When they do, so do I.”

“Mm, here's one.” John taps the page, keeps his fingers in place so Sherlock can't turn it. “Mysterious death in the middle of the night, no suspects? Could be promising.”

Sherlock stares at the article. It barely takes up a sixth of the page.

“No.”

“Already got it figured out?”

He keeps looking.

*

They agree that the case won't go up on the blog. But it's still been too long since the last post, John tells him, and so Sherlock spends the afternoon recounting a case from his early days for public consumption. American. Dense and convoluted. He remembers it in startling clarity.

“It wasn't anything important at all, just a transcript of a call and response initiation tradition in their fraternity. Completely innocuous by itself.” The memories flood back, and Sherlock finds all his cases are interesting, even the old ones. He leaps from his chair to pace the room. “But the map with the transcript, well–”

“Yes, all right, hang on, _slowly._ ” Most of John's vowels sound different when he smiles while saying them. Sherlock's mouth moves too slow for his brain, and John's typing moves too slow for the planet. “You're always going on about the details, at least give me a chance to get them all down.”

“I haven't even gotten to the good part,” Sherlock tells him.

John leans back in his chair and cracks the knuckles of his left hand. “Then it goes double. Human speeds this time, if you don't mind.”

*

That night, Sherlock makes a mistake. 

He spreads himself out on the sofa and listens to John type, a slow, steady stream of percussion. He's been typing all day, working on the same single blog post. It's mind-boggling to think of how he functions in even a semi-modern society.

“You're bad at that, you know,” Sherlock says aloud.

John looks up at him.

“Really awful. Terrible, even.” He doesn't know what he's saying. His hands shake, so his fingers close around the fabric of his dressing gown to stop them. “The typing. Not the writing. Although that could stand to be better, even. You put too much emphasis in the wrong places.”

John sets his laptop on the armrest of his chair. He stands and sits on the coffee table by Sherlock's head.

“I don't know what you expect me to do.” He shouldn't make eye contact. He's breaking enough rules. He does anyway. “I won't preserve them. Publish them. If the website purges them it makes no difference to me. They were my cases, I was there, I remember them.”

John says nothing.

“I'm sorry I almost died.”

John says nothing.

“If I could change it, I would. Tell me how. I'll do it.”

John continues to say nothing. He leans so close that Sherlock imagines he could count the ridges of John's irises.

His eyes fall shut before he can get the chance.

*

Heat, everywhere. Too much of it, so that his sheets cling to his thighs, his stomach, the backs of his arms.

He feels like he's going to explode.

It's magnificent.

*

The flat is empty the next morning. Sherlock stands in the sitting room by the window until his ankles start to ache, but there is no sound of John on the floor above, or his tread on the stairs (up or down), or his voice from the hall. 

He sits on the sofa to wait. He scatters his materials across the coffee table in front of him. He dozes, his knees pulled into his stomach and his dressing gown draped backwards across his shoulders.

“About time,” John murmurs, in the moments before true sleep. “God help us all.”

*

When Sherlock wakes up in the morning, Lestrade is already in the sitting room. He's three days early. Sherlock should have accounted for past experience when he made the initial calculation, but he didn't. He thinks he might be appalled at himself, but only finds the energy to be marginally disappointed.

Lestrade came alone. (Off-duty.) He shouldn't have. Protocol. But he couldn't help himself. This isn't the first time he's done this, though it'll probably be the last.

(Sentiment.)

Sherlock closes his eyes and lays his aching head back on the armrest. If he wants to hear John's voice before he goes, he'll need another hit, but Lestrade already has the materials in his hands. He doesn't have the energy to fight for them, and so he lets Lestrade tug at the knot of his tourniquet until it releases.

Sherlock concentrates.

John stands in the kitchen poking at sausage in a pan.

(With Lestrade banging down the door first thing in the morning? No.)

John sits on the coffee table and takes Sherlock's pulse at his neck instead of his wrist.

(He would have done that already. Lestrade wouldn't have even had time to _consider_ coming here. It doesn't fit.)

John waits in the doorway with Sherlock's travel bag already packed, only the essentials.

(Wrong!)

“Come on, mate,” Lestrade says. Gently. Like taming a horse. Sherlock wonders if they'll stroke his nose to get him to take his medicine. “If you come with me then nobody has to call your brother, which I promise you will be good news for everyone.”

Sherlock lies still and considers.

“Bollocks, what they printed in the paper the other day.” Two of Lestrade's fingers touch the inside of Sherlock's wrist. “'No suspects.' I gave them their suspect once they bothered to consult me about it. Literally, thanks to you.” Practically put him on a silver platter for them. It shouldn't have taken this long. “He'll be going away for a long time if I have anything to say about it.”

He feels nauseous. Another hit would help with that, too.

“You can't stay here. He'd be telling you the same thing, you know that.” Lestrade knows exactly where to press and how hard. It's astounding, really. Only an idiot would have failed to factor in his previous experience immediately, and Sherlock's only thought of it now. “He wouldn't have wanted to see you like this.”

Sherlock breathes. In through his nose, out through his mouth. “Just as well that he can't, then, isn't it?”

He opens his eyes.

Lestrade calls his brother anyway.


End file.
